Minerva

When very obese patients undergo bariatric surgery they gain more than a better figure: they also seem to experience an improvement in severe migraine headaches. A prospective observational study of 24 patients with migraine who were undergoing bariatric surgery showed reductions in severity of migraine and in the number of days with headache. No mechanism to explain these observations was offered, but the authors wonder if more modest, behaviourally generated weight losses could bring about similar improvements (Neurology 2011;76:1135-8, doi:10.1212/wnl.0b013e318212ab1e).

Studies indicate that drug eluting stents are associated with less risk at the time of the intervention than coronary bypass grafting, but carry a greater need for later revascularisation. In a large meta-analysis, 25 randomised and non-randomised comparative studies were assessed, with data from over 34 000 patients. As seen with observational studies, drug eluting stents were associated …